Make time for your own reading

I originally published this post on August 2, 2022. I am hanging off a cliff by the edge of my fingernails re: this newsletter right now, and the only way I can keep publishing it is to republish my old stuff. Which is my way of saying, you may see more republished posts as I try to survive this season of my life.

Of course, I’ve edited and updated it as needed.

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📫 Questions from you

Full disclosure: this wasn’t a question I received as a comment or reply to a post. It isn’t even about children’s books. But it is a query I field frequently, and it does come up, when you tell me about your biggest pain points when it comes to your family’s reading life. So here we are.

Years ago, one of my dearest friends was over at my house with her family. She and I were alone in my kitchen when she turned to me and said quite seriously:

“I need to ask you something: how do you read so much?”

I told her many of the things I’ve shared with you in the past about my own reading routines — I don’t watch much TV, I put down my phone in the evenings, I immediately quit anything I’m not into, I bring a book with me wherever I go, I listen to audiobooks.

But later, I thought more about it.

Once upon a time, I didn’t read so much. (Well, I read sixty-some books a year, which is a lot but not “so much” compared to the number I read now, which is easily twice that.)

I remember when two things changed for me.

The first was when I set a goal, in 2007, to read 100 books that year. Something about that practice taught me — someone who already read pretty voraciously and had since I was a child — to be a better reader. I don’t speed read, but I did get faster. I also honed my taste, so I was spending less time on books I didn’t like, but pushed myself through for some undetermined reason.

The second was years later — definitely after I became a mother and probably when I first got interested in the homeschool world in 2016, 2017, somewhere thereafter — when I read a blog post online from the author, professor, and homeschool veteran Susan Wise Bauer that amounted to, “Stop doing housework and read.”

I cannot find the post today, but I did dig up something almost identical (maybe it was the original, my brain is unable to verify) on the Memoria Press website. Never mind that it’s a classical Christian curriculum publishing company — the point is that Wise Bauer’s message changed my life in that it gave me permission to “Stop Cleaning the Kitchen and Read a Book.”

And not just permission in that sentence, in a way that says, “Don’t worry about your sticky floors or unfolded laundry; it can wait! Reading is self-care!” No. Wise Bauer’s argument is a moral one, and much more compelling: first, that we can — and should — teach ourselves. Yes. 1000%. I received a pretty good education in K-12 public schools, and then later in both universities and technical colleges, but none of that knowledge compares to the self-education I’ve received from two highly engaged parents, a childhood of traveling and talking to interesting adults, and a lifetime of reading. I will never believe otherwise.

It’s the second part of her argument that so powerfully impacted my reading habits and, by extension, my life, and that’s the idea that in our culture, we reward immediate, tangible results — a vacuumed house, a homecooked meal on the table, tasks that “prove” we are “doing our jobs” as, let’s be honest, mothers — rather than the outcome of a more nebulous life of the mind: reading, and the vast knowledge that come from it.

Wise Bauer continues, making a point about speed, and urging us to forget about it — explaining that we think faster is better because “we live in a society which has been greatly influenced by computer technology,” when in fact, “It doesn’t matter how fast you read. The process of understanding — of enlightenment — cannot be rushed.”

I was so intrigued by this idea — and loved her now-classic homeschooling book, The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education At Home, which she co-wrote with her mother, Jessie Wise — that I checked out its companion book from the library, where she absolutely nails it.

The project of self-education will bring your own sense of what is truly worthwhile into sharp relief. Forced to choose between a chapter of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and some more immediately rewarding task, you will come face to face with your deepest values: What do you prize more, a temporary visible accomplishment or the beginnings of a deeper understanding of racial tensions in the United States? A finished to-do list, or a teaspoonful of wisdom?

This is not a small question. The world that applauds visible achievement is giving you a very strong message about why you are worthwhile. When you choose to think, rather than do, you are rejecting production in favor of reflection; you are pushing back against a system that wants to locate your worth as a human being in your ability to turn out a commodity. Reading, rather than working, is a small but meaningful dissent.

So resist other satisfactions or duties that encroach on your reading time.

from The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had (p23-24)

With Wise Bauer’s powerful argument in the back of my brain, I not only continued with the reading habits I’d already cultivated, but I made some important additions: I hired someone to clean my house (which is absolutely a privilege, let me be clear about that, while also mentioning that I worked like a maniac for a decade with the goal of being able to afford to do that). I let the laundry sit in the basket after I put my kids to bed and picked up my book instead. I left the linen closet unpurged for yet another Saturday afternoon while I sat in the sunshine on my deck and read.

I’m not saying any of us can ignore everything, just forget about it all, so we can have the reading life of our dreams — that’s unrealistic, if not outright impossible. My point is merely: I do a lot. I have a very full life. I have a great number of balls in the air and I don’t drop very many of them. Only, in some instances, I make the choice to read instead.

(It’s worth mentioning that I never embarked on Wise Bauer’s course of self-education set out in The Well-Educated Mind, because I realized as I read further that I didn’t need it — I’ve read almost all the books she suggests, I’ve engaged with many of the big ideas and the Great Conversation at home and at school, thanks to my brilliant parents and my generous K-20 teachers. Whatever is left over, I will get to in my own time. That’s not to say it’s not a worthy path — it’s very much so, especially if you feel like your own education was/is lacking.)

So, to my friend and to all of you who struggle with this issue: the next time you’re faced with your own to-do list, your own choice to go get the oil changed or weed the garden or defrost the freezer: remember the small but meaningful revolution is to read, and do that instead.

(Here’s a Substack Notes post I wrote about a little reading project I do sometimes.)

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Read good books and take good care 😘

Sarah

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